Hi all. This is my first post on here and I’d share some thoughts as there’s very little posted by PE owners recently that I could find. As a bit of background to the purchase, I made an expensive journey from looking at a Naim QB2 for my kitchen for casual listening to replacing the KEF LS 50 Wireless ii’s in my living room. Long story, but I ended up demo’ing a Muso 2 and then an Atom, the Atom sounded great and I went home to see if it could work in the kitchen. In the mean time I went to the KEF studio in central London to demo some speakers (you can just book a slot on line and go, good experience).
Anyway, whilst terminal procrastinating was setting in, I saw a manufacturer refurbished PE come up for half the cheapest price on line of a new one, so I made the plunge. Whilst on the dirty subject of money, I wouldn’t have bought a PE if it was even the lowest discounted price new that you can currently get online. I wanted a 1 box solution and had been looking at the Hegel 190v, but that didn’t have HDMI connection or Bluetooth for when the kids/friends are using it.
I’ve had the PE for about a month now and it’s paired with KEF R3 Metas. At the moment the whole lot is on a sideboard but stands are on the way. It took a little while to set up and get up and running as I have a mesh system in the house and my phone/ipad kept pairing with a different hub than the one in the living room and I couldn’t see the PE in the app. I plugged the PE directly into the hub and I now have no problems connecting and seeing and controlling the device in the app. Once set up it’s very smooth switching from streaming providers, I generally use Qobuz connect at the moment for streaming higher res stuff along with Spotify connect and they connect perfectly through their native apps also. I don’t think I have ever used the remote control, but I haven’t connected the TV yet, so we’ll see.
With regards to the sound from the set-up I’m glad I took the time to demo Naim streaming devices and various speakers because the PE and Metas sound really good together. The clarity of vocals and acoustic instruments is really stand-out and the bass is well controlled and punchy but not over blown. This will go as loud as you could reasonably want, and the whole time the music is clear and true, it just gets louder with no degradation to what is playing, if that makes sense. Low level listening is also one of the key requirements I had, I want to be able to have the TV on, pod casts etc. To that end the PE also delivers, really clear without the need to have it loud on the few occasions I’ve listened to pod casts in peace.
I would say it’s unfair to view the PE as only a life style product, it’s a serious piece of kit. While it was bought and works beautifully as a one box solution to include music streaming, TV and bluetooth, the quality of sound and control is phenomenal and I think it would take a serious financial commitment to get any meaningful upgrade, also I doubt there’s a better one box solution out there at the moment. I’m really looking forward to getting all my old CD’s onto a drive and seeing what that sounds like. It’s a versatile set-up that will be used and enjoyed every day, but is also for music lovers. So if you’re thinking about getting a Uniti Nova of any sort, I can recommend it, but the extra punch of the PE is worth considering if you’ll use it.
Once the TV and hard drive is connected, and the speakers are on stands, I’ll give an update if the thread is still open.
